1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a printing means and a method for progressive printing. The printing means includes two separate printers. The printers are unlike in that one is a non-impact printer and the other is a dot-matrix printer. The two printers together produce a negotiable instrument printed in at least two colors.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been a need to provide negotiable instruments printed in high quality and with security information printed in at least one color. Some financial documents, such as checks, have been printed using the high quality of a laser printer or a xerographic printer. But there is a problem with using laser or xerographic printing processes to apply the security information: these processes do not provide a physical impact and penetrating ink to preclude alteration of the printing by, say, scraping off the ink or toner on the printed document. Though checks have been printed in color by dot-matrix printers to place information on the checks, these printers cannot also provide the high quality required by banks for a negotiable instrument.
Prior U.S. patents have mentioned the use of multiple printers to produce financial documents. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,114, titled "Tri-Level Xerography Using a MICR Toner in Combination With a Non-MICR Toner" ("PARKER"), shows the use of two xerographic printers, one for printing magnetic ink character recognition ("MICR") toner and the other for printing in color. U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,789, titled "Apparatus for Processing Vouchers, In Particular Checks" ("GAUCHER"), shows two dot-matrix printers. U.S. Pat. No. 4,069,755, titled "Ribbonless Endorser for Printing Both Fixed and Variable Information on Moving Documents" ("BEERY"), shows the use of a mechanical dot-matrix printer and a rolling stamp.
One problem with the use of multiple printers, though, is that it is relatively expensive to synchronize the two printers. Thus, for example, PARKER and GAUCHER involve continuous printing. Also, note U.S. Pat. No. 4,157,783, titled "Item Responsive Print Inhibiting Apparatus" ("MUSTER"), which uses markings on checks detected by a sensor to deactivate certain printers in a series of printers. Such approaches are tricky, relatively expensive, and for one reason or another, usually are unsuitable for use in automated teller machine ("ATM") applications or in office settings.